


And Fall

by Serindrana



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-28 20:44:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serindrana/pseuds/Serindrana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a curious sort of exile that has the once great Ser Cauthrien reduced to living in a backwater town with no armor and no weapons. But when bandits come and the local bann has no aid to offer, it makes sense to give up what seems like such a little thing to protect her new home.</p><p>But the bargain isn't exactly what she expected, and soon a Grey Warden comes around looking for an answer to a rash of sudden, violent deaths...</p><p> </p><p>A spiritual sequel to <i>And Rise</i>, a sort of companion fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Early autumn. The ground was hard-packed and dusted with frost, the trees thin enough to move through, the moon high enough to see by. There was scent on the air, tracing a path ever closer to the mountains._

 _She followed it. Nearly half a mile out, the smell of cooking meat and camp fires came on the wind. Closer still and the softest sounds followed, the hiss of urine into pine needle beds, the crunch of boots on soil as wood was gathered._

 _When she broke the treeline, people's voices rose in cries, shouts and ululations that had no meaning to the ears. Closer. Closer still, and then there was blood and meat, bones to crack and windpipes to crush. It was exhilarating, a part of living, and it seemed nearly endless, the parade of humans on two legs, and then on three, and finally on none. The camp was spread wide through the trees, and finding the last of them was the greatest part of the hunt; catching them in claws and teeth was the culmination of a grand pursuit._

 _And then all was quiet._   


_Prowling between the tents to gather the meal took the rest of the night, and it was a soothing sort of job, a soothing sort of focus. Her blood no longer seemed to burn as hot, as needy, and slowly the smells on the air began to lessen in their brightness, the moonlight to dim, the pounding hunger to subside. She settled, licking at the few wounds along her flank, cleaning the matted, bloody fur with careful precision._

 _Near dawn, there was a howl, followed by another, and then they approached, scavengers seeking her kill. She growled, rising to her full height, and they cowered. One whined as it retreated. Another looked to leap, and she snapped at it._

 _They left._

 _The sun rose, and she settled down for a well-earned rest._

  


* * *

  


It was early evening, the sun sinking below the trees. There was no rustle of wind or creak of branches, no shifting of bodies, no crying of birds. Cauthrien, former knight of Ferelden and exile in her own land, did her best not to mark it; there could be no hesitating, not here, not now.

Her people were under siege, and if the Crown would not send aid, then she would do what she could in its stead.

She pressed forward, away from the small village, north in tandem with the spine of the towering Frostbacks. The wind was chill in the early autumn, the temperature dropping with the sun, and she pulled her fur-lined cloak up higher and tighter. It was ratty and the fur was missing in patches, but it was all she had, and it would do. It would do as she would do - out of necessity, out of the inevitability of what it had been made to.

The attacks had started four months ago. They had been small, then - a lamb stolen, chickens, a storehouse ransacked for food. Her neighbors, when they had deigned talk to the disgraced and disarmed woman who had settled amongst them when there was nowhere else to go, had treated it with all the resignation of a people used to theft and abuse. They had sounded, she thought, like her father when she was still a girl, always expecting the next crop failure, the next too-heavy tax.

But with each passing month the attackers - bandits, she knew now, bandits seated out in the foothills where the trees grew thicker still and the snows began at the end of August - grew bolder, took more, gloried in each push. Buildings were burned. The mill's water wheel had been shattered. And now, on the eve of the harvest, the village waited with what few weapons they could scrounge from farm tools and personal armaments for what they all expected to be the worst yet.

And the Crown sent no help.

They had gone first to the local Bann, but he had been unable to spare men, not so soon after the Blight. A rider had gone to Redcliffe, then, to seek Arl Eamon's aid while Cauthrien grit her teeth and held her tongue. Arl Eamon was in Denerim. Arl Eamon had left no aid to be sent so far afield.

And Denerim's response had been the same: no, we cannot. In another life, Cauthrien would have fought it, would have been able to push for at least a small team to be sent to the little village. As it was, she could no longer so much as carry a sword or wear more than boiled leather. She and her legacy were the other Blight upon the town, and the men and women she wanted nothing more than to help had turned her away when she had offered to train their militia.

She followed a dream, now. She had been reduced to visions and auguries, things which she had never put faith in but had watched lead others astray. But what else could she do? Wait in the little hovel of a home the town had allowed her with a broom for when they returned? So when the dream came that whispered of help in the forest, she had donned her warmest clothing, packed a satchel of food, and left.

Instinct drove her forward, instinct she had never thought she had. The path in the forest was not one made by men, but she followed it unerringly, never losing the trail and never feeling for a moment lost or turned around. She tried to shake the feeling of being watched, the ghostly sound of laughter in the soundless trees. She walked until the sun set and the land grew dark.

The air grew colder. The light of the moon, where it filtered silver through the branches, began to turn blue and milky. She blinked her eyes to clear what must have been exhaustion from them and her breath hissed steaming from her lips. There was a thrum in the air, shivering into her even through her many layers.

There was a quiet laugh, and this time she could not ignore it.

She spun on her heel, hand on the dagger at her hip. It was the only weapon she was allowed to carry in her disgrace, and she slid it from its sheathe as her eyes scanned the dark.There was no movement, no catch of the light on a shadow.

But there was a voice, sliding from the shadows and settling around her throat.

"Looking for something, little knight?"

Cauthrien's heart tightened and steeled, and she turned again, looking for the source, for the woman that voice surely had to come from. "I-" she said, the only sound she could make before her breath caught. From the shadows came a figure strolling, naked but for chains and the drape of furs and silks around her waist. Her lips were in the smallest smile, her eyes lidded, and her head was wreathed in flames.

Cauthrien took a step back, lifting her dagger.

"Stay back, beast," she said, and the demon laughed, a low and silken sound that threatened to wind around Cauthrien and smother her to silence.

"Beast?" She took another step, though her feet made no sound and she slid as if drifting. "How cruel. Here I've come to offer you that which you crave."

"I will not bargain with you," Cauthrien bit out. She was no devout Andrastian, but nothing good could come of dealing with a demon, of bargaining with herself with something more and less than a man. She was certain. She was tempered metal that would not give.

The demon only laughed.

"Won't you? You came when I called." The demon canted her head, quirking a brow. Her hands slid down along her body in idle patterns, fingers twisting into the fur draped over her legs. Cauthrien tried not to watch and tried not to think of the dream that had driven her forward. The bandits, chased from the town- the people, rejoicing in their safety, welcoming her at last-

"I- that-"

The demon reached out and clasped the blade of Cauthrien's dagger between her palms. She turned it aside and down, and then released it to stroke her knuckles over Cauthrien's cheek. "You came," the demon murmured. "You came so that you could protect your home. Isn't that right, little knight?"

 _It's not my home_ , she wanted to say, but all she could do was nod, mute and leaning towards the demon's touch, chill and warm together.

"You want to protect your home," the demon purred again, coming close enough that Cauthrien could feel the weight of her body brushing against hers. "But you've made promises to others, haven't you, that stop you cold? You say you won't bargain, but you're so very good at taking orders and kneeling to direction. Isn't this better still? I can give you what you want."

"And you?" Cauthrien breathed, muscles tensed but hand trembling on the hilt of her knife. It would be so easy to kill the demon, to fit the blade up beneath her ribs, but her body refused to obey.

"No need to worry about that," the demon laughed, hand settling onto Cauthrien's hip. "You'll hardly notice the cost, I assure you."

"Tell me." Cauthrien's voice was strained and quiet, and she swallowed. A step back. Just a step back-

The demon rolled her shoulders, a languid shrug. "I can't leave this place," the demon said, and she looked behind Cauthrien to the flashes of mountain through the branches. "But if you let me help you, I will see through your eyes on occasion."

That made Cauthrien jerk back, shake her head and lift her blade. "I will not give you my body, demon."

"I do not ask you for your body." The demon did not follow, merely watched and beckoned with a crooked hand. "I can't have your body. But your eyes- oh, your eyes, just on occasion, just when you let me in. Those I would have. And in return, you will save your new home without raising a blade. Such a small cost. Such a large gain. Isn't this better than taking orders? Isn't this better than surrendering everything that you are?"

Cauthrien swallowed as if around a stone. It was so easy to approach her again, and so easy to nod.

"I will save them? I will protect them?"

"Yes."

"And I'll still be- me?"

The demon inclined her head, reached up a hand to trace a thumb over Cauthrien's lips. "You will still be you, as you are meant to be."

She took a deep, stammering breath. It was almost the harvest, and the bandits would return. The Crown would do nothing. She would keep her vows- and she would protect them all.

Perhaps they would even call her neighbor by the end of it.

"I accept your deal."

  


* * *

  


 _Her last thought was only_ ** _please protect them_**.

  


* * *

  


Cauthrien woke curled on her side, the noon-day sun streaming down through the leaves above and her limbs tight and aching from the cold. She frowned, shifting and rolling onto her back. The shot of dull pain at her hip and the chill of the soil against her bare skin made her gasp, and she struggled to her feet.

Her bare feet. She wore not a scrap of clothing, her skin only hidden by streaks of soil and blood. Her thigh throbbed, and a halting touch revealed thick bruises and the slash of a sword, shallow and scabbed over. She lifted her eyes slowly.

In front of her was a tent, ground before it furrowed and the fabric of it torn and stained. She turned. More tents- more hints of struggle, of attack. She fought to remember the night before, the trip into the woods, the moonlight, the trek north.

The demon, her lips cold on Cauthrien's own, and then-

Nothing.

She swallowed, then coughed, gagging at the sudden flare of copper on her tongue. She dropped to her knees, retching dry and heaving for breath.  _Blood_. Blood on her skin and in her mouth, and a ruined camp.

She stayed shaking and hunched for what seemed like an eternity, an eternity where she refused to move as if moving would make it more real. But the cold finally seeped too deep and, shivering, she stumbled to her feet and made for the closest tent, searching for clothing. The trousers were too small, but the shirt fit her frame, and the blanket made a good cloak. There was bread there, too, and a wineskin, and she ate and drank her fill to wash the taste of blood from her mouth.

She found boots in the next tent, a fur hat, a dagger. But in the next and the next, she found nothing but blood and scraps of flesh. Her stomach churned. She pressed on.

In the sixth tent, she found her neighbor's sword, stolen in the most recent raid.

In the eighth, she found a child, dead with its throat ripped out.

She gave up after the tenth. She picked her way through the rest of the camp, a camp dotted with the dead and half-eaten bandits. There was only silence beneath the overwhelming pounding of her blood.

A beast had destroyed these people, had torn them apart like so much meat with teeth and claws.

And that beast had been her.


	2. Chapter 2

In four months, the beast took over six times.

The harvest had been finished, the cold had settled in with the coming of winter, and Cauthrien lived not in town but in a small shelter she had built over a mile away. At times, she considered going further away. At times, she considered ending her life. But she could only trap so much food, and she feared that anything else she did might cause the beast to take her fully. And so she stayed at what she could only hope was a safe distance, and did her best to live.

But the memories stayed with her. The beast had taken her again two weeks after she returned from the bandit camp. She had still lived in town, then, praying that perhaps it all had gone away, that the bandits would be the only time, that the deal was done. She had been exhausted; her sleep was troubled every night, and the work she did in the town to get by had grown heavier with the harvest. Retreating to the tavern had only led to getting embroiled in an argument, abuses hurled at her by a passing soldier who had stopped for a drink and recognized Loghain's right hand.

She'd known him, at Ostagar. He had deserted. She couldn't find it in herself to blame him.

The insults had continued, the comments designed to drive her to her feet or make her burn with shame, and weathering them through the evening had bowed her shoulders, had made her head pound. She had been tired. She had been dizzy from the drink.

And then she felt an itch beneath her skin, like something trying to get out, and her vision had grown sharper. She had known every smell that had floated on the air. She had heard every touch of wood to wood, every shift of leather and furs and wool, every breath and every laugh.

And she felt something just behind her eyes, peering out with a quiet laugh.

Cauthrien had run.

In the morning, she had found herself five miles south of the town, cold and naked with blood in her mouth and on her hands, and on her lips only fervent prayers that it had been a deer she had slain.

  


* * *

  


She picked her way along the iced over road into town, trying to ignore the stares and whispers. She reshouldered the weight of her pack, using the motion to hide her tension, her unease. It was dangerous to come here. These days, she could usually feel the change coming - but not always. And the warning signs of a change were all there: she was cold, hungry, and exhausted.

But she would rather sate her hunger on breads and fruits than on whatever creature crossed her hunting path, and the trip would be short. The winter had come in full and her blankets were thin and worn. The cold had driven her to what had almost been home, and she prayed her count of days was right and that the market was being held in the town square.

It was, and she ran a gloved hand over her mouth and jaw, rubbing at her dirty face and resisting the urge to sink to her knees in thanks.  _This_  was what she had been reduced to, killing in the dark and coming to trade her last few coins for a last few bits of food.

What she would do when the winter worsened, she didn't know.

She was trying to talk the price of half a bushel of apples down to something she could manage when she heard footsteps draw near, felt the heat of another person at her side. Her senses were growing sharper; she had to get out.

"Excuse me?"

Cauthrien took a deep breath and then looked away from the farmer and to her side. The person who had approached was a man, as tall as she was and with hair just as dark. He wore a heavily furred cloak and leather armor beneath. A quiver hung at his hip, and he held a bow in one gloved hand.

"Yes?" she asked, shifting uneasily. He looked familiar, but she couldn't place his voice, his eyes, and it had been so long since anybody had approached with anything beyond indifference. "Is there something you need?"

"Are you Ser Cauthrien?" He didn't quite smile as he said it, but his expression softened. Still, she hesitated. Her name meant too many things, and so few of them were laudable.

The farmer, a woman named Wenna, cleared her throat, and Cauthrien nodded. "Yes, that's me."

"Ah, good," the man said, inclining his head with the faintest quirk of his lips. There was something like relief in his gaze for just a moment, adding to the list of emotions she'd seen so rarely in recent months. He looked to Wenna, then reached to the coin purse at his hip. "Here," he said, and handed a silver to the woman. "For her purchase."

Cauthrien bit down a half-formed argument. She couldn't deny free food, not when it came without teeth and fur as its price.

Wenna complained that she couldn't well make change from a silver, but the man simply waved a hand, then beckoned for Cauthrien to follow. She finished loading her satchel and a few long strides brought her nearly even with him.

"Do you have somewhere we can talk, ser?" he asked with a glance over his fur-draped shoulders. She wondered what he saw -  _Ser Cauthrien_ , dirt-smudged and thinner than before. Did hair poke out from her ears now? Were her teeth too sharp? Her eyes gone golden?

No matter any of it; it had been some time since her old title had been said without mockery and she exhaled audibly. "No need to call me that. I had my knighthood stripped over a year ago. And... yes. Perhaps."

She didn't know if the old, run down house she had once lived in had been sold yet or not, but with a thin smile she turned them towards it. He didn't comment or question, instead falling in step beside her. He smelled of horses and the forest, the dust of the road. He had come a long way.

Cauthrien cleared her throat. "You were looking for me?" she asked, cautious and careful, stealing glances. He was no courier of the Crown's and he wore no heraldry of any house, though she could catch glimpses of blue and silver at his throat. 

"Not you, specifically," he said, and she noted his accent.  _Fereldan_ , but not wholly. There was another note to it that she couldn't quite place. "I didn't imagine I'd find somebody like you here in the hinterlands."

That gave her pause, and when she stopped he stopped with her. She frowned, peering at him. "Then...?"

"There is a matter," he said after a moment and a steadying breath that her ears seemed to prick to. "You must know of it. All of the recent deaths- people savaged, but not by wolves or bears or other humans. Amaranthine worries that it might be the work of darkspawn."

His words jolted through her, and she turned, doing her best not to run for the old building, doing her best to seem just a determined and perhaps eager host.

But he was there for her. She could taste blood in her mouth as if it were fresh, and swallowed thickly. "Darkspawn? Then you are a Grey Warden?"

"I am." He chuckled, and the sound broke through her tension, at odds with everything about the situation. "You don't recognize me? Or at least the nose? I thought word would have spread through the old guard by now. They have always loved to talk."

The latch gave under her fingers and she turned to look at him again. He was shadowed now, more than he had been in the marketplace, but she looked at him fully. Something in the set of his lips- his hairline- his nose.

"Howe?" she asked, confusion alongside the sense of sinking in her belly.

"Nathaniel." His smile turned grim. "And I need your help."


	3. Chapter 3

The inside of the house didn't look so bad or so unlived in. There was leaf litter by the windows and door, and spots where the roof had leaked and she hadn't been there to fix it, but she had abandoned it in such a hurry that it looked as if she still lived there.

There were two chairs. There were pickled vegetables. There was dried meat. She even had a few bottles of ale left, ceramic jugs with worn stoppers. She handed one to Nathaniel, but didn't take one for herself, turning from him to set the fire burning and trying to hide her lurking guilt.

"Are you going to eat?" he asked, and when she glanced back to him, she saw that he was frozen with one hand outstretched to the table.

"Maybe later," she said, then crouched to spark the kindling.

"If you're sure." She heard the scrape of ceramic against wood, but no pop of a stopper. Breathing. Chewing. Sounds she'd nearly forgotten hiding herself away from everybody. She closed her eyes once the kindling caught, just for a moment.

"So you said you needed my help?" she asked as she opened them again, gaze fixed on the slowly growing flame.

Nathaniel hummed assent. "If you can offer it. I'll admit, I have no idea what your... situation is here. But nobody else will give me straight answers. I take it they don't like outsiders here."

"No," she said. "Not really. Especially not ones with histories behind them."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." The smaller sticks began to char and crack, and she straightened, dusting her hands on her leggings. With a bit of heat creeping into the room, and the relief of company that did not want her dead (yet), some of her nerves had the chance to calm, and when she turned to him again it was with a new measure of ease. A tiny, wry smile quirked her lips. "How did you recognize me, though? You weren't here for the fanfare of my arrival, when the local bann took my sword from me in the middle of the square."

That drew a wince from him, a small one, and for a moment she frowned, uncertain of where it had come from. But then he rubbed at the hooked bridge of his nose, and she bowed her head slightly. To be Rendon Howe's son in Ferelden could not be easy. There was no blame on Nathaniel's own shoulders, not like there was on hers, but she could easily imagine whispers of disgrace, if not worse.

Nathaniel cleared his throat, and reached to unstopper his bottle. "There aren't many women of your stature in these parts. Or in general. And though you've changed somewhat in the last nine or ten years..."

She lowered herself into the seat across from him, quirking a brow when the words wouldn't come. He chuckled.

"When I was younger, and my father took me to the Landsmeet, I saw you running drills in the yard. Several times. It made an... impression. At any rate-"

"And you?" Cauthrien leaned forward, pinching a slice of dried meat between her fingers. She found herself newly eager for the flow of conversation, wariness set aside by his good nature. "Nathaniel Howe, back in Ferelden? After all these years?"

"And a Grey Warden. Don't forget that bit - it's important."

"I'm guessing there's a story there?"

"There always is."

She found herself smiling, more than a dead little thing twisting her lips, and it only took a moment to overcome the oddness of sitting, talking, eating with Rendon's oldest son. She remembered when he had been exiled nearly a decade before in the most civil way possible, to get him out from under his father's feet. And here he was, a Grey Warden, in a little backwater by the foothills of the Frostbacks - interested in talking to her.

It was almost like being home.

He was smiling, too, though he covered it with a pull from his bottle. "Local?" he asked, and she nodded, and then he set it aside with a small sigh.

"To business, then."

Her smile turned to stone, then crumbled.

"To business." She finally ate the morsel she was holding, and sat back again.  _Business_  set her stomach roiling unpleasantly, and the guilt edged up from her belly. "Though I'm not sure I can tell you anything they haven't already."

"Are you certain?" Nathaniel frowned, glancing to the door. "They all give me differing reports, and all the bodies have been burned already. Ten people dead from here and the surrounding area, maybe more. A woodsman mentioned finding a camp that seemed deserted, except for all the blood stains and gnawed bones, but he was... deep in his cups."

Cauthrien paled, and hid it by looking back to the fire.

"Some are maintaining it's just wolves," Nathaniel continued, exhaustion beginning to thread through his voice. "Some are saying it's Avarrs coming down from the hills. A few mentioned the Chasind, though Maker knows why they'd be this far north. And the stories change too - not eaten at all, only bones left, cracked bones, whole bones, disemboweled... there's no sense to it all, except that something's been happening, and people here aren't comfortable with it."

She rubbed a hand over her mouth. The pounding in her ears had begun, and it felt as if her skin was beginning to prickle, a thousand tiny hairs lurking just below the surface. She focused on her breathing and tried to write it all off to nerves. To paranoia.

"Cauthrien?"

There was genuine concern in his voice, soft and low and soothing, and she turned back, exhaling slowly. "I don't think I can help," she confessed, quietly, and hoped he couldn't read it for what it was.

Nathaniel nodded and held the bottle out towards her. "Something's wrong," he said.

The corner of her mouth ticked upwards. "You could say that." After a moment's hesitation, she leaned forward and wrapped her fingers around the neck of the bottle. The tip of her pinky brushed his thumb. He lingered before letting go and she did her best not to mark it.

"Is it something I could help you with?" he asked, not looking away from her and letting his hands fall idle to the table.

She shook her head, bottle at her lips. "No. I- no, I doubt it."

For a moment she saw him with his bow drawn, arrow nocked and trained on her throat. It would be an easy thing to ask, and the right thing. To tell him that she couldn't help because the killer was her. To ask him to end it.

But for all that the beast was terrible, she was weak, and she wanted nothing more than his concern and his support, a little bit of comfort that slowly soothed her skin, until the guilt turned to a heavy weight that blanketed her, unchanging and oddly comforting.

"They're not welcoming of outsiders here, are they?" Nathaniel asked. He watched as she took a drink, then set the bottle down. As her fingers left the body of it, he reached out his gloved hand and touched hers.

She swallowed. "No," she said. "No, they aren't. I haven't dared come here in four months."  _Four months ago_ , when the deaths have started. Her lips twisted into a dark and cynical smile, and she ducked her head, unable to watch him, unable to know him. "I'm sorry. I can't help you."

It was as much a confession as she could give.

He shifted in his seat, leaning forward, leather armor creaking and boot sliding across the floor. The sound made her start. His fingers wound around hers, tight, and she looked to him to find his eyes fixed on her, gaze intense. Her breath caught. His hand clenched.

"No," he said, voice low and firm, "I think you can."


	4. Chapter 4

She waited for the pull, the harsh grab that would drag her to the table or onto the floor. She waited for the boot to the stomach or the head. She waited for the draw of a bow.

None came.

His grip loosened by degrees and he at last looked away, down and with an odd sort of smile on his lips.  _Embarrassment_ , she realized with a shuddering exhale. There was a blush forming on his cheeks, and, finally, he released her.

"Excuse me," he said. "I only meant..." His fingers flexed a moment around nothing, then wrapped around the bottle. With a jerk, he pulled it to his lips and took a long pull.

Her heart stumbled towards something steady again, and with his eyes closed for a moment she sagged forward in her seat, rubbing at her jaw. For a moment, he had given her a shivering flush of comfort. And for a moment, he had set her nerves and heart on edge and left her trembling from the fear of it all.

And for a moment, he gave her stillness, a space to collect herself.

The  _thunk_  of the bottle against the table made her glance up.

"I'm sorry," he said. "That was- presumptuous of me. I only meant that if you would help me put the few facts I do have into some meaningful order that I'd..." He shifted. "Appreciate it. And if you'd work beside me." His hand splayed against the wood, and she found herself leaning forward, fear and nerves forgotten in the halting flow of his words. His lips were pursed in thought and his eyes, when he looked to her, were bright. "I have nothing but respect for you, and faith in your abilities, and I'd be honored to have your assistance, no matter how limited you think it will be."

He was sincere, each word carefully chosen and delivered with a steady gaze. Her breathing rattled. Here was a man who had to know what she had done during the war, who had to know, too, that she had not stopped the Warden from killing his father- and yet he looked straight at her and told her he wanted to work with her, regardless of if she knew anything at all about the killings.

And the way he had touched her wrist-

She wanted to help him. In that moment, she would have hunted  _herself_ , if only to have hunted at his side. It was an impossibility, and she knew it, but it didn't stop her from nodding. For the first time in months, maybe longer, somebody had reached out to her not out of necessity or of anger, but out of interest. Concern.

"You have my aid," she said, and impossibilities didn't keep her from settling her hand over his. He was warm through the leather, and slowly she curled her fingers around him.

His flush was back, darkening his pale skin as his throat bobbed. His steady gaze became markedly less so, and she caught the pale tip of his tongue peeking out to wet his lips as he looked down at their hands. "Cauthrien?" he murmured, and she closed her eyes to the sound of it, the questioning warmth in it.

She couldn't imagine how they all would have laughed, everybody in Maric's Shield and back in Denerim, to know that she could lean in towards such comfort the moment it was offered by Rendon Howe's eldest son. Her fingers curled more tightly around his, and he turned his hand beneath hers, lifting it to his lips and brushing a kiss across her knuckles.

She could have sobbed from the contact, something so unfamiliar and so desperately needed after months of being alone, months of feeling only desperation and hopelessness.

Instead she only leaned in, opening her eyes. She gently guided their joined hands back to her. Her fingers slid around to cup his hand and she returned the light kiss, tasting the leather and oil of his gloves. His exhale shook, and then he stood, the scrape of his chair loud and final as he leaned forward and touched his lips to hers.

"This is okay?" he whispered against her, and she answered with a firmer kiss, a searching one, one that led him stumbling around the small table and her out of her seat. His hands came trembling to rest on her waist, then slid around until his arms encircled her. Her fingers threaded into the fur at his collar, then up his jaw to tangle in his hair. A moment's gentleness turned to a needy pull, and she arched against him.

If for just a minute, an hour, she could forget- if for just that long, he could make her feel like nothing at all had gone wrong-

The fire crackled in the hearth beside them, full and warm, and when Nathaniel moved to step away, she gave a leading tug that had him settling with her on the floor. He groaned softly against her mouth when she released him long enough to undo the toggle of his cloak. He reached up and caught her hand in his, holding it still as he pulled away just enough to rest his brow against hers.

"Tell me this is okay," he said, voice hoarse and throaty and lips parted. "This isn't what I came here for- but tell me this is okay, and-"

"It's okay. It's more than okay." Cauthrien smiled as she dragged a shaking hand down his front. "Trust me."

She needed this more than she could put into words, more than she should, and she sighed in relief and need when he kissed her again, his hands fumbling with his cloak to spread it out beside them. He pulled her with him down onto it, pressing kisses to her lips and jaw, and she countered by nuzzling against his nose, fingers fumbling with the closures of his armor. His quiver rattled and arrows threatened to slide free, but he had it off in a breath, set haphazardly aside as his hands dropped to the worn fasteners of her clothing. He tried them only a moment before he pulled back enough to tug his gloves off and cast them aside.

A laugh bubbled from her, and his answered, a slow smile and a low chuckle as he dropped his head to her neck, leaving kisses in a line to her shoulder.

She had learned in the last four months how to shed her clothing quickly, how to leave it all behind as the change came over her. Then, there was only panic. Now, the frantic energy of it all was stoked by the cracking and popping of burning logs, the path of his lips, the feel of his heartbeat against hers once he put his stiff leather jerkin aside. She twined herself around him as their clothing fell away, the slide of skin on skin becoming the only goal.

Her fears were forgotten. The itching beneath her skin stilled where he touched and where he kissed. The exhaustion was set aside in favor of something exultant.

She couldn't remember the last time somebody else had dragged their hands along her skin, had slipped fingers between her legs to make her gasp and sigh and rock her hips. She couldn't remember the last time somebody had kissed her, and kissed her deeply, and intently. She couldn't remember the last time somebody had clasped her hand with theirs and brought it to their lips, even as she arched and groaned and whispered their name in a plea for more. But if she couldn't remember it, she also didn't care, and when Nathaniel did each of those things she felt it as if for the first time bolstered by an unshakable certainty.

Her hands were clumsy as she pulled him close, as she curled her legs around his hips and opened herself to him, kissing at his brow and nose as he rocked forward, eager for her and searching. He palmed her breast a moment before reaching lower to help position himself, and then with a nudge of his hips and a roll of hers, he was inside of her, drawing another moan from her throat and another kiss from her lips. They tangled together on their sides, facing one another and tracing paths with their fingers and mouths, rising in the firelight to nip and laugh and breathe names and wordless whispers. She lost herself in him, groaning with each thrust and answering it with a tightening of her legs, a twitching of her hips.

Her fingers dug hard into her skin. For all the heady glory of the moment, there was a thread of urgency in her, and she drew it out of him in turn. His lips closed on her pulse and he bucked his hips, and she dragged her nails across his scalp and forced him deeper until he was twitching out of rhythm, on the edge and dancing there.

It was a conquering, then, a fight, a triumph, and she rolled on top of him, nipping at the column of his throat as she slowed each movement to the very barest curl of her stomach. He whined her name. She grinned and jerked her hips in a hard thrust, hard enough to make him arch up and groan. Her hands stayed tangled in his hair and she kept him down, working herself until it was she who crested first, who gasped, " _Nathaniel_ -" and lost the rest in a low and breathless growl, twitching until he took hold of her hips and pulled her down against him.

She felt his pulse where they joined as he surrendered to it all.

* * *

They must have slept. It was dark when she noted the time, stirring beside him and hissing at the ache of her knees and hip from the hard floor. The cloak had only done so much, and as she pushed herself up, she felt every place where he had marked her.

It was comforting.

But it was also a reminder that she couldn't fill her end of the bargain. She had promised him aid, but the only aid she could give would lead him straight to her. An arrow through the throat might have been a mercy, but looking down at him, drowsy and still flush with pleasure, she couldn't bring him to it.

No, the aches in her body were the warnings of what he could do if she didn't run.

She reached for her clothing, pulling it on with the quick and efficient movements of a woman raised in the barracks. It was best, she thought, to treat what had happened as another giving in, as allowing another beast to take her skin. It had been enjoyable, but wasn't the hunt? She could never remember it clearly, but she remembered ecstasy and satisfaction.

It sounded close enough, close enough to make her thoughts spiral towards claw and fur. Her skin began to prickle.

"Cauthrien?"

She turned, startled and staring with wide eys.

Nathaniel pushed himself up and watched her with a quirked brow. "... Are you going out?"

"I-"

He was all muscle and scar with shoulders uneven from years of drawing a bow.  _Rendon Howe's son_. A part of her whispered that it didn't matter, that there was  _something_  and had been something when their lips met, or even before. The other part whispered that it was only a death wish, and a foolish one at that.

She turned away and began putting away the food he had left almost completely untouched.

" _Cauthrien_." She could hear the confusion in his voice, masked by a sudden imperiousness that she flinched to refuse. For a moment, he sounded almost like Loghain, and it sent shivers through her.

The memories it dredged up made her head begin to pound. She could smell the sweat on him, the sex - and hear his pulse.

It was close. As close as it had been in the market square. A distraction could only save her for so long, and no longer, and the longer he stayed- the longer  _she_  stayed-

"Get out," Cauthrien said, eyes fixed on the cupboard she stood had. She could feel it building, the urge to hunt, the urge to rend and tear and feast. She had to make him leave, so that when she left he had no trail he could follow. "Get  _out_ , Nathaniel-"

"No."

She heard him stand, heard him grab clothing from the floor. There was the rustle of fabric and the flex of leather, and she could smell it all. It made her head spin. She rested her weight firmly on the cupboard door, palms splayed. There- the buckles of his jerkin. And there, the slide of foot into boot. A rattle - the quiver.

"I said get out," she said.

There was no answer but the sound of footsteps. He crossed the room and took her wrist, and she could feel the wolf in her already, in how she snapped and snarled and rounded on him. His eyes went wide, then narrowed again to harsh slits. He bared his teeth in turn. " _No_ ," he said, and his voice was low, lower and a different kind of low than when he had taken her wrist before. "I want to know what's going on. With you. With us-"

" _Let go of me_ ," she growled, and then broke away. She stumbled for the door. The beast was coming back faster than she could banish it, and the panic settling in her gut urged it on. If he stayed, if she stayed, people would die.

And he would know her for what she was. That, more than anything else, drove her forward.

 _But his lips on her skin, the feel of his hips beneath her hands_ -

"Cauthrien,  _please_."

She stopped, hand on the latch. "I can't," she said.

"Tell me why," he said, and it was barely more than a whisper. "You told me to trust you, Cauthrien-"

She swallowed.

When she moved again, her feet took her not to the door but to her trunk, and she opened it with shaking hands. Inside- yes, there. An old jar, crusted with age, but she dragged it out and opened it.  _Dry_. She spit into it, then stuck her fingers in to mix to paint.

 _Kaddis_. The smell was pungent and unmistakable for anything but what it was. "Put this on," she said as she smeared a line down her nose with shaking hands. "Put this on and then get me into the woods."

He stared, and she shoved the jar towards him. "You trust me, right?" she said, fighting the urge to run or to attack him, fighting to trust him in turn.  _An arrow through the throat would be a kindness_ , she reminded herself, and he had come here looking for an answer. And he would find it.

This way, at least, she wouldn't kill him.

She hoped.


	5. Chapter 5

_There were scents on the air, the smell of humans, so many of them and all so close together. It was impossible to ignore the sounds of so many, glimpses of lights through the trees burning brighter than any stars. Her heart beat for them and saliva coated her tongue. Her teeth were ready. Her claws were ready._

 _But behind her was home, and slowly, she turned and followed it._

 **_Home_ ** _made a noise, one she couldn't wholly understand but sought after all the same. Home was shadows moving in the trees and the crunch of snow beneath a heel. Home smelled like humans, too, but not only that. There was something else. She followed it._

 _The urge to hunt was strong, though, and the more trees that went by, the more the sky was covered by waving branches, the stronger the urge became. The wind was chill and biting, and the heat of a pounding chase beckoned. She turned at every scent. Rabbit- marmot- owl-_

 _Too fast, too small._

 _Home whispered something, and she turned with a snap and a snarl, pulse thundering and fingers twitching with the need to grasp and rend. There was the creak of wood and of sinew, and in an instant she surged forward, a howl ripping throw the night air and leading the way. Ice- rock- branches- through it all the sound led, and the blinding, piercing sensation of_ **_blood, running_ ** _. The hunt was made. The hunt would complete her._

* * *

She woke up on her side, naked and shivering in the dark. The moon was out somewhere; she could see its light filtering silent through the trees in the distance. For a moment she focused only on the shapes they made.

And then the memories came back to her - the chase, the hunt, kaddis, and-

 _Nathaniel_.

She twisted, fighting through the stiffness of her limbs. As she moved, fur shifted against her skin - a cloak, thick and warm enough to keep her from freezing in the winter chill. She clutched it to her, wildly scanning the small clearing for any sign of him. The taste of blood registered in her mouth, and her gut twisted-

"They told stories about you, you know."

She looked to his voice, relief spreading through her and making her sag against the uneven soil. He was sitting close by on a fallen log, and in the thin light she could make out the streaks of paint across his face. She remembered putting them there, dragging her shaking fingers down his face when he could only stare.

And  _Maker_ , they had kept him alive. She smiled a trembling smile.

He didn't smile back.

Instead, he looked down at his hands, where he scrubbed at the kaddis streaking the leather with a spare cloth. "When I was in the Free Marches, I heard about you. The stories were all exaggerated, I'm sure, if they weren't outright fabrications. Some were flattering. Some... weren't. But you know, I somehow ended up collecting a lot of them. I thought I could make out the real Ser Cauthrien with enough of them, and eight years in the Free Marches with no real hope of coming home... it was one of the things that kept me occupied. That made me feel connected. I knew somebody, even if I had never met her, and even if I never would."

Slowly, he looked up to her. His lips were pressed to a thin line, and his brow was furrowed.

The last of her smile fell away, and she rolled onto her back, staring up at the silhouettes of branches against the night sky. "You should have killed me," she said, the almost-memory of fur and claw too much to bear.

He said nothing. She could hear the creak of leather as he shifted or flexed his fingers, and she could hear his breath, rough on the calm night air. The beast was resting, and she thankfully couldn't hear his heartbeat.

She waited for the draw of a bow.

"Why haven't you?" she whispered when it didn't come.

"Because even though I'd never met you before, I was right about you," Nathaniel said, and with another creak of leather he was on his feet, crossing the small space between them. He set a bundle of her clothing down beside her, then bent to touch her cheek, thumb rubbing at a streak of paint. "You did what you could today to protect people. You fought it.

"And that's the Ser Cauthrien I know."

She couldn't help the snorting laugh that broke from her lungs, and she pulled away from him, sitting up and tugging his cloak tight around her. "The  _Ser Cauthrien_  you know," she said, letting any pretense of innocence fall away, "is the possible darkspawn who killed ten people. No, more- ten people, and an entire bandit camp. Because I couldn't fight it  _enough_."

It was like a weight fell away from her, and for the first time in months she lifted her chin with something almost like pride. It was a strange but comfortable mixture of resignation, acknowledgment, and determination.

It was a lot like what she had felt when she told the Hero of Ferelden what she had done, and what she could not apologize for, even as she stepped aside.

Nathaniel said nothing, watching her with a gaze that was level and calm.

It was a lot like what the Hero of Fereldan had looked like in that hall.

She swallowed and pressed forward her guilt.

"Just look at me," Cauthrien said, rubbing at the paint or blood caked and flaking from her lips. "Or look at whatever I became."

"A creature," Nathaniel said, "easily eight feet tall, covered in fur, built like a wolf and a man and a god."

Her breath hissed through her teeth. "A werewolf, then. Beasts of legend."

"A beast of legend that is a real and breathing woman who did not attack me and who listened when I told her to stay her hand. That hardly sounds like a beast to me."

" _Stop it_ ," she snarled, stumbling up to her feet and clutching the fur tight, as if it would meld to her skin and become a part of her. "Would you defend the darkspawn?"

Nathaniel only gazed back at her, placid and stoic, and said, "I have."

He stood, but kept a distance of five paces, shaking his head. "Rationality," he began, when she said nothing and did nothing but look on with furrowed brow and ragged breath, "tempers a beast's nature. I can't tell you much more than that, but there was a time when I stayed my hand against a darkspawn who was different from the others. And you, now, are not the hunting animal I saw an hour ago. And then, you were not a ravenous creature bent only on death. Kaddis could stop you. Perhaps other things can."

Looking down, he untied a water skin from his hip and passed it to her without any other comment. She took it and drank.

When she swallowed, the copper tang swelled again.  _The hunt_  was still in her veins, little traces that made her alert and ever-nervous. With a glance to the forest around them, she murmured,

"Tell me what I killed."

Something had died. She remember the sensation, if not the moment, of her teeth breaking skin and bone. She remembered the triumph. And whatever else she was, she wasn't hungry. Not anymore.

Nathaniel smiled. "A deer. I put an arrow through its neck. It didn't suffer. And now you are fed, and it is finished."

"This time." Cauthrien swallowed again, relief edging into her frigid fingertips as she passed back the skin. Turning from him, she crouched to begin pulling her clothing back on. It was all intact; she must have stripped in those last moments, after she lost memory and before she lost thought. "I made a deal," she said as she clumsily tugged wool up her legs. "Four months ago, when the attacks began. I made a deal to kill the bandits. And now-"

"Hold, Nathaniel said, and she turned to look back to him. He had strung his bow and now pulled an arrow from his quiver, nocking it and peering into the woods.

There was nothing but the creaking of wood at first, and she quickly pulled her heavy shirt on, not taking the time to wrap her breasts. She looked to where he did, but saw nothing but shadows.

And then there was a snap of wood under foot, the crunch of deep frost beneath a heel.

The creak of too many bows being drawn at once.


	6. Chapter 6

Cauthrien let the fur cloak fall and straightened, hands empty and spread at her sides. Nathaniel lowered his bow and slid his arrow from the nock. There was shifting in the shadows, and then the sound of undisguised footsteps.

Three people dressed in heavy furs with painted whorls on their brows and cheeks stepped into the small clearing, arrows trained on heart and throat.

"How far did we range?" Cauthrien whispered.

"Far," Nathaniel hissed back. "Too far. I don't know where-"

"Ewald territory," the foremost hunter said, a woman with a heavy accent that Cauthrien could barely understand and could not place. There was a guttural roll to the end of each word, a clipping of it short. "Best have a reason for trespassing, Fereldans."

Nathaniel took a step, then halted as the woman shifted, aiming for him instead.

"We were lost," Cauthrien said, staying still and forcing herself to breathe easily. It was only the meal in her belly and how recent the change had been that kept her skin from crawling in anticipation and nerves. "And we beg your pardon. Point us towards east, and we'll be gone."

" _Lost_ , at this time of night and this time of year?" the woman said. She snorted, shaking her head. "Foolish enough to settle for an entire life, and foolish enough to get lost in winter in unfamiliar land."

"Please," Cauthrien said.

"East," the woman said, "is behind you. Start walking."

"Herleva," one of the men said, lowering his bow a few inches and looking to her in place of Nathaniel. "They won't make it back to whatever settlement they strike for until dawn. And with the beast out-"

"Beast?" Cauthrien asked, heart sinking.

"Surely you heard the howling," the man said. Herleva nodded in agreement. "Not very long ago at all. Like a wolf's howl, but different."

"We heard it," Nathaniel said, and Cauthrien swallowed, saying nothing and praying only that her face didn't betray her. But she was steady in her skin, and Nathaniel had not been able to tell until she lost control. "What is it?"

"A werewolf," Herleva said. "But if you've wandered this far astray without stumbling across it, perhaps the gods of chance will keep you a while longer."

"It won't be long before the sun rises," the man said, shifting in his furred boots. "We could wait."

"I refuse to watch over them. I am no goatherd,  _Odalric_." Herleva looked away from Nathaniel to glare at the other man - younger, and more nervous, but infinitely preferable in Cauthrien's mind.  _Leaving_  was something she was all too eager to do, and if they could leave without Herleva's arrows trained on them-

"It's hospitality," Odalric said.

"And what will the Thane say when we come home followed by two Fereldan pups?"

Cauthrien glanced to Nathaniel and found him looking at her, brow arched. She swallowed.

He stepped forward again. "There is a demon in these woods," he said, and Cauthrien closed her eyes. She hadn't said as much, but he was quick and clever. And she could only wait - for dismissal, for disbelief, or for distrust.

There was silence.

And then the lowering of bows, the creak as wood was relaxed. "This we know," Herleva said. Behind her and her two men, there were soft noises in the forest. Cauthrien could make out the barest forms of figures waiting, at least five more. A full hunting party. Three they could have taken, perhaps, but eight... she hoped that Nathaniel knew what he was doing.

"We seek to kill it. That was our purpose in coming out so far," Nathaniel continued, and her breath caught.

 _Kill the demon_.

It was simple enough. When her hopelessness was at its worst, she had imagined that there was no demon left to kill - that it lived wholly inside of her. But when the anger had surpassed the slow rot, she had prowled the forest, trying desperately to find where the demon had brought her to. She payed attention to every dream she could hold the morning after, waiting for a sign, a beckoning.

She had allowed the transformation once, hoping to feel the demon ride behind her eyes. Nothing had come of it but death, and yet she had tried.

 _Kill the demon_.

"You will die in the attempt," Herleva said, and Cauthrien opened her eyes again. "As have our warriors. It's impossible. It's easier to avoid it."

"No," Cauthrien said, stepping forward. "We  _must_. We have no choice in the matter. Point us there." Herleva didn't move. The need became consuming, and all she could think of was how close she had come to killing the demon that night. "Or give us aid. What can I offer to sway you?"

The third archer spoke, his voice slow and filled with gravel, accent so thick Cauthrien could barely follow him. The tongue of the Avvars was still mixed with what had come before the Trade Tongue, and a few words she had no guesses to the meaning of.

But she heard the words  _take_  and  _Thane_  and  _bargain_. Bargain made her heart clench, but she lifted her chin and waited. She had made worse bargains, and if Nathaniel was not comfortable with a retreat, and if an end was in sight- she would do this.

The man finished speaking, and Herleva nodded, slowly. She met Cauthrien's gaze. "Then the two of you come with us. This is not a matter for me. You will speak with the Thane, once the sun has risen."

* * *

As they sat cross-legged in front of the fire that burned in the middle of the longhouse, stoked for the morning cooking, Cauthrien tried to remember everything she had ever heard or read about the Avvars. It wasn't much. The lords and armies of Ferelden kept away from the foothills of the mountains, and the people who lived day to day on the borderlands didn't often write books or speak to outsiders.

Loghain had never seen the Avvars as a threat or an asset to any conflict with Orlais, or at least not enough to devote resources to figuring them out. The most she knew were rumors - temporary marriages, temporary houses, temporary fields. War paint and old gods, terrible warriors and old customs.

But what she saw around her was a far cry from the stories, even in the early morning. There was no bloody dust miring the settlement in some frozen path. There was activity, the endless roil of conversation, and the thoughtful, shuttered gaze of the Thane as he considered them.

She tried not to let the fear in, but even with Nathaniel sitting close enough that she could have reached out and rested a hand on his knee, it was impossible to withstand it.

The man on the raised platform with them couldn't have been older than Cauthrien, and in the harsh winds and chill of the mountain could have easily been younger beneath his beard. He was dressed in a mix of fur and woven woolens, likely traded from a nearby town. In his hand was a pipe, and the dried leaves inside were Orlesian, from as far afield and Montsimmard. She knew the smell; she'd been trained to identify it, because few Fereldans smoked it, and those who did had connections in Orlais.

Strange, to find it here.

He was not what she had expected, and she wondered if he knew that.

"So you have seen this demon?" he asked at last, rolling the stem of the pipe back and forth between his fingers.

She was halfway into a nod when she hesitated, unable to fully form the word  _yes_. She remembered Herleva's words, that all attempts to confront the creature had ended in death.

It was Nathaniel who spoke. "We've seen the signs."

"The werewolf," the Thane murmured, and Cauthrien finished her nod.

"Yes," she said. "Exactly that. It's killed some of our own." Cauthrien looked to Nathaniel, who kept himself only to a small nod, with no acknowledgment that the killer sat just beside him. She thought a prayer of thanks.

"It has taken some of our goats," the Thane said, sitting back. "It has yet to attack any of us, but it will, eventually. When it does, we will kill the werewolf. Going after the demon is unnecessary."

"And if it creates another?" Cauthrien asked, frowning and rubbing at the base of her throat, where a small phantom itch had grown at the thought of being slain. The hint of freedom drew her forward through it. "It would be best to stop the source."

"No."

"We can do this, your- ... Thane," she stumbled, and it drew a chuckle from him.

"Lothar. We are speaking to one another, sp you may call me Lothar. And I do not doubt you are a decent warrior, at least. You both wear war paint. Your companion wears Warden colors at his throat."

Nathaniel nodded, idly rubbing at the dried kaddis on his nose. "I do."

"And you," Lothar said, turning to her once more, "carry yourself like a warrior. I do not doubt your skills."

"Then why not tell us where to find it? That's all the aid we need."

Lothar shook his head, then took a drag on his pipe. He thumbed at his nose as he exhaled a long stream of smoke and said, "You would die in the attempt. I can show you, but it would be worthless."

" _Why_?" She sat forward, and found Nathaniel's hand on her shoulder, easing her back.

"Because it is a powerful demon," Lothar sighed. "Because there are many dead things in that place. Because it will raise them up and use them to destroy you. It is easier to kill the werewolf and avoid that part of the forest. It is what we do when we come to this part of the hills. The demon is sealed in one place, and was a long time ago, before your Chantry took to stealing or killing our mages. Now, we avoid. I can't afford to lose so many warriors to it."

 _I can't leave this place_.

Cauthrien put a hand to her head, rubbing at her temple. The demon had told her as much - that she could possess no one, that she could only remain and look through another's eyes. But if she could raise the dead - that was another problem entirely.

Cauthrien hadn't encountered anything of the sort when she had gone into the woods. But she had been beckoned by a dream. The demon had called her forward and guided her. She had been asked, and tempted, and taken.

And yet...

"This demon must fall," Cauthrien said. "And I will work for your aid if you would let me. Let your warriors draw the attention of the walking dead, and Nathaniel and I will destroy the demon. With the demon gone, the dead should pose no more threat."

Lothar frowned, brow furrowing, and in that moment he looked older than his years, more like the leader he seemed to be. At her side, Nathaniel's hand slipped from her knee to touch her back. She leaned into the touch, grateful for any show of support.

"How long," Lothar said, "have you been practicing the sword?"

"Over fifteen years," Cauthrien returned, quickly. "Nearly twenty."

"That was your life?" He rubbed at his beard.

"Yes. I have no family and no children." She straightened and lifted her chin, falling into the lines of a soldier again without problem.

Lothar leaned forward. "And no leader or army to return to?"

Her throat bobbed with her harsh swallow. "None now."

"The reason for your dishonor?" he asked, and she gritted her teeth.

"I chose the wrong side in the war," she said, "and deferred when it became clear I was in the wrong. It was not my competence with a blade."

Lother hummed low in his throat, and took another puff of his pipe, shifting to look to Nathaniel. "And you," he said, "would say that she is loyal? That she does the duty that is asked of her? And that she does it well?"

"Without peer," Nathaniel said, and she wondered how he could be so quick when he had never seen her fight and only had her to blame for his father's death.

But she didn't have time to focus on it, because Lothar set aside his pipe and reached out a hand. "If we make this bargain," he said, "we decide after the battle how long you serve us. I can't ask your companion for the same, so you must prove your worth."

She looked between him and his outstretched hand. If this failed, if the demon fell and she remained a beast, it would betray his trust - but she would be dead and so would the demon, and it would be over. And if she was right, a servitude with an end was not so bad. A bargain with set terms was not so bad.

Cauthrien looked to Nathaniel. He nodded, slowly, and she wondered once more what he saw, what he was thinking, how he could trust her, and how he could seem so calm. Her throat bobbed and her lips pursed to a thin line. He offered her a small smile.

She nodded, then reached out and took Lothar's hand.

His grip was strong, and he fixed her with a steady gaze as they shook. "We move come tomorrow morning."

She took a deep breath, and nodded.

"It is done."


	7. Chapter 7

She slept through much of the rest of the day, rising only for the evening meal and a further discussion with Lothar about the logistics of what was to come. Eight warriors would go with them to the border of the demon's land, and wait there for their return. Herleva and Odalric would be among them, even if Herleva still didn't look on her with anything like trust. Cauthrien couldn't blame her.

Dinner was a better meal than she had had in months, maybe even since she had left Denerim. There was dried and smoked venison, goat milk, turnips and roots she couldn't recognize from the gardens surrounding the settlement. There was drink, too, and a warm fire, and Nathaniel nearby.

She didn't know what to think of Nathaniel. He stayed at hand while she was awake, and he let her guide when they spoke to Lothar or any of the others. But he said little, and often looked lost in thought, shuttered and apart. His support was unwavering- and yet she was still a beast, and he had still seen her for what she was, had seen her hunt down a deer and knew that she had hunted humans the same way.

And this was not his business. She was no darkspawn. And yet- he stayed.

She slept again, nestled in furs, until the hours before dawn when the longhouse began to stir again. The fire in the center of the hall was stoked again. The brighter light of it filtered in through the lattice that set off their sleeping platform on two sides from the rest of the hall. Nathaniel rested beside her, close but not touching, and for a moment she felt the urge to lean in and kiss his brow before he woke.

A fear of her own too-sharp teeth made her rise instead, and he soon followed, groggy and rubbing a hand over his stubble, two days-growth now.

"Did you sleep well?" he asked, voice rough from sleep. She nodded, turning from him to reach for the armor Lothar had lent to her.

"Well enough," she said, and then paused. "... Better than in a long while. And you?"

"The same." Behind her was the echoing sound of shifting leather as he, too, began to dress. It was easier than looking at one another, she thought. Sometimes the concern and determination in his eyes made her heart ache and threaten to seize, guilt and desire warring for ascendancy. It was easier to look aside or to focus on what lurked within.

Beyond the lattice she could see the others dressing in kit, and family members - the farmers and herders and even a few children, restless or waked by the shifting thrum of the longhouse coming to life again - helping or beginning to make the morning's food. She watched as her fingers began tugging at laces. It was so different from a Fereldan town, or from Denerim. So many people in the same space, without even walls to separate them, with only hangings and collapsible screens. There was one small room, with fuller walls, by the center - but she had seen only one person go in and out of it, an older woman who wore her hair in thick braids that ended in bells and rings. Even the Thane did not follow her, though he sat and spoke with her now.

"Cauthrien?" Nathaniel murmured, and she started, looking over her shoulder to him. He was fully dressed and watching her.

"Almost ready."

His answering smile was faint. "Good." She saw his throat bob, and then his shoulders rise with a slow inhale. "... Can you tell me why we're here?"

She blinked, then frowned. "Because you told them about the demon. And reminded me that it could be killed. But if you wish to go-"

He held up a hand. "That's not it. I... want to know how this happened. Before we go further. Last night, you said you made a deal. And now you'd make another one to kill this demon. I want to know what happened."

 _Oh_.

A part of her had assumed he already knew, or had guessed. He had guessed that a demon lurked in the forest, though she hadn't said it, and he had acted as if he understood her curse. But she had never told him the details, never mentioned them, and she turned away again to find her words.

"Cauthrien?"

It wouldn't be so hard to tell him, or so bad. And if it made him understand, if it made him turn away...

She only hoped he would help her end it before then, and that when he left, she wouldn't feel the desperate urge to follow him.

"I made the deal," Cauthrien said, slowly, as she finished fixing her borrowed leathers in place, "because I had no other options. The current law states that I can't wear steel armor or wield any weapon larger than a hunter's knife." Her exhale was sharp and bitterly amused. "I was reduced to broom handles and thick wool, and how could I have fought off a whole bandit camp like that? And with the harvest coming... something had to be done. If the bann could not send men because of his own famine, then how would we fare?"

"Did they hate you even then?" he asked when she paused.

Cauthrien nodded slowly and turned to him, armor settled. "Of course they did. If the war had come this far, I would have burned their fields the way I did so many others. It's not as if they didn't know who I am, and they had stories of their own about me." The smile that tugged at her lips was thin and wry. " _The wild dog of Denerim_."

Nathaniel snorted, and she shrugged. "So I couldn't train a militia, and I couldn't take up arms myself, and even if they pushed me away, this was still the home I had chosen. So when a dream I had beckoned me into the forest with a solution, I went. I had so little else to turn to. I went, and I found-  _her_ , and I made my choice. She offered me a way to take care of the bandits without steel, without breaking my oath. Of course I took it."

"And then... this." Nathaniel sighed, then reached for her, resting a hand on her shoulder. When she looked away, he followed to catch her gaze again. "But we'll fix it. The source will be stopped, and you'll be as you were again, and this can all be over. And perhaps we'll even have time to sit together and talk about happier things." His voice grew softer and he smiled, hand sliding to her neck, to cup her cheek.

Cauthrien stiffened and shook her head. "If you're doing this because you slept with me-"

" _No_ ," he said, fast and firm, and pulled back as if burned. "That's not... I do it for the same _reasons_  I went to bed with you, Cauthrien. Because you're a good woman. Because I trust in what I know of you. And because I want to know you more."

"You're a fool." Her cheeks felt heavy with fire, and she turned away from him, rubbing at her skin and wishing his rough voice was not also so silken, in its way. If she hadn't let him come so close-

She would be alone, shivering, in her hovel in the forest with a sack of apples and not much else. Certainly no hope of ending the curse, and certainly no warm memory of him curled around her, trusting her before he even knew her.

Behind her, Nathaniel stepped closer. She waited for a hand to settle on her shoulder again, but it didn't come. Instead, he murmured, "Perhaps. But if I can stop these deaths and save somebody who was only trying to do what was right..."

"And what of those who want vengeance? What of just retribution?" She couldn't separate out her frustration from her loneliness, from her guilt or from her gratitude, and her words trembled and caught. "Loghain lost his head in front of his child, even though he was offered a chance at redemption."

"Ten dead and some bandits is hardly the same as the civil war-"

"And yet I killed many in the civil war, too. The demon said-" Her voice dropped, and she glanced to the woven partition between their room and the rest of the longhouse. "The demon said that I would be me, as I was meant to be. Perhaps this is the Maker's punishment. A beast of a woman turned into a beast in truth."

" _Stop_."

"Then tell me why you're doing this."

Nathaniel retreated. She looked behind her and watched as he sat heavily on the edge of the sleeping platform, gaze falling to his hands. He said nothing at first, and she watched his brow crease, watched his fingers curl.

Beyond the partition, she heard Lothar call out, " _Fereldans!"_

She didn't move except to move towards him. Her hands trembled with every tangled up bit of feeling inside of her, but with the quiet her sparks of anger faded. It was her turn to reach out and settle a hand on his shoulder.

"Nathaniel?"

He huffed a laugh, and glanced up to her. "Because," he said, "I had somebody to pull me from the dark. Who trusted that what I appeared to be on the surface was only a part of what I was in truth. When I came back to Ferelden, from the Marches, I came to kill the woman who had killed my father. I ended up imprisoned instead, and then drafted into the Wardens. I was... not particularly approachable, then. But she waited through it, and  _pushed_  me through it, and now I'm here."

"That's not the same," Cauthrien said, shaking her head slowly, but the corner of her mouth tugged up helplessly.

"I say that it is. I will always see it as such. You are afflicted with a curse. Remove the curse, and you're a woman who was misguided - not one who is wantonly cruel. It's true that some of the reason I trust you, and want to help you, is because I- am fond of you. Because I grew fond of stories, and then you surpassed them. But that's not all of it, Cauthrien."

She laughed, suddenly and with likely too much relief. "You have the patience of Andraste, then, and all of her faith."

"I'd call it stubbornness and arrogance, honestly, but we can go with that. It certainly sounds more noble." He offered a lopsided smile. "I never said I think this is the smartest decision of my life. But it feels right, and in a day it will be done."

"And you'll keep chasing stories?"

"If they'll let me." His smile broadened, then faded to his usual seeming stoicism. Lothar's voice boomed again, and he rose. "We should go, before our host revokes his aid. Come on."


	8. Chapter 8

When she felt the barest edges of a chill that was greater and deeper than the wind whistling in the trees, she knew they were close. She no longer had Nathaniel’s great cloak to ward off the cold, and unlike in years past she did not ride to battle on horseback. Instead, she crept on paths she could barely make out, surrounded on all sides by Avvar warriors who were simultaneously guides, comrades, and captors.

She guessed that they had left the settlement close on three hours ago, armed and streaked with war paint. Nathaniel had jokingly murmured in her ear that it smelled a lot like kaddis, and she could only nod, only feel the momentary wash of relief.

If she lost herself, at least she would take nobody else with her.

Lothar had travelled with them as far as the outermost fields. It had taken her longer than she cared to admit to recognize them for what they were; they grew not swaths of a single crop, but a mottling of different plants, the same roots they had eaten the night before, and they grew them even now in the winter. They were small. There were no oxen to till the soil, and trees still grew, if sparsely. They was certainly not Fereldan fields, but the end of them marked the end of home.

He had spoken quietly with Herleva, then turned and addressed them all, telling them to never stray forward if they didn’t have to. It had a heavy note of leaving her and Nathaniel to their deaths, but she couldn’t blame him, or any of them. She had nodded and thanked them all for their aid.

And Lothar had come to her, and taken her hand, and reminded her of her oath.

She flexed her fingers at the memory of it.  _Temporary service_ , she thought again. It was a more than acceptable trade, and one she was eager to make if it only meant she would be free of what she had become. The Avvars were no Fereldans - but _temporary_  was not a lifetime.

Temporary service, or death. Cauthrien took a steadying breath, then came to walk close at Nathaniel’s side, leaning in.

“If,” she murmured, low enough that the others couldn’t hear, “this goes poorly- if it doesn’t free me, or if I become uncontrollable-“

“I’ll end it,” he promised, and his gloved hand found hers. “I trust in you, but I won’t allow you to suffer.”

“Thank you.”

“Hold!” came Odalric’s voice, and the group stopped. Cauthrien let her fingers wind tight around Nathaniel’s for a moment longer, then pulled away, hand going to the hilt of her sword. “This is where it begins,” Odalric said. “Keep your eyes open and your weapons close at hand. And if they come for you, run. Fight again when their backs are turned.”

He was answered with quiet grunts of assent, and Herleva nodded, then looked to Cauthrien and Nathaniel. “You two,” she said, “go in first. We will draw them from you.”

“Thank you,” Cauthrien said and bowed her head. Nathaniel echoed her.

Herleva huffed a laugh. “Fool Fereldans. Hakkon Wintersbreath keep you, so that you at least don’t freeze to death where you fall.”

Nathaniel snorted, and Cauthrien felt her lips quirk in turn, and then, with a nod, they moved to the front of the group and led them further into the trees.

Without their guides to lead them, the path became harder to find. It was narrow and at places she couldn’t make it out, but she pressed forward all the same. The others dropped behind, but kept pace at a distance. 

“Do you remember this place?” Nathaniel asked. She pulled her sword free as they moved and checked once again the balance of it. It wasn’t what she would have chosen herself, but it was well-made and better than a broom or tooth and claw. Rolling her shoulders, she glanced to him.

And she tried to think. Four months ago she had been led by a dream, and had followed a path that had seemed not to be there at all. It was much like the path they were on now. Did that mean that she had followed an Avvar trail, or did that mean that they even now drew closer to the demon? Did it mean both?

“We’re approaching from a different direction,” she settled on, no answer at all. But he nodded all the same.

Another few prowling steps, and she heard it - the sudden fall off of birds in the trees, the sudden quieting of everything. Her skin crawled and she felt the itch of fur just behind her ears, more nerves than the change coming on, more a warning than anything else. She lifted her sword, and behind her, Nathaniel nocked an arrow, following her lead.

“Soon?” he asked, and as she nodded the first screech shattered the deathly quiet.

He loosed his arrow before she even saw the corpse lunging for them, jaw gaping wide and teeth too sharp for a human. She ducked low as it crashed forward, clawing at itself where the arrow punched through its throat. A quick strike to its knees with the flat of her blade and it was down, and she was on her feet once more, whirling and scanning the trees for more.

Two shadows were heralded by the crashing of branches, and Cauthrien shouted, “There!” before she dove forward, striking one with her shoulder and taking the other’s head off. An arrow  _thunk_ ed into the tree trunk beside her, and a third found its home in the remaining corpse’s belly.

Behind her she could hear others. The breaking of branches and the shouts of the Avvar warriors pierced through the air. She looked back to see Odalric slam into the chest of one of the corpses, and Herleva put an arrow through another’s eye. One of the other women began to beat the pommel of her short sword against the hide shield she carried. The dull thudding drew the shifting, creaking dead towards them, and Cauthrien let out a shuddering breath. There were too many of them - too many for her to have ever faced on her own.

But the plan was working.

“What direction? Lead, Cauthrien!” Nathaniel called, and she nodded, turning back to the task before them and scanning the trees for any sign of the almost-path. She couldn’t see it. But the cold tugged at her from just ahead, and she pushed forward.

“This way,” she said, and he was at her side in an instant, keeping her back as she pressed on. The trees grew closer together, and at first she doubted.

And then an arrow not theirs and not Avvarian struck the ground before her feet and she swore, breaking into a run in the direction it had come from, crouched low and praying she could reach the shooter before it found a better aim.

“ _Left!_ ” Nathaniel shouted, and she veered. She caught a flash of white between the trees and made for it, and in another instant she was on a skeleton, with an old Avvar bow and its bones stained dark in places and bleached in others. The flat of her blade struck its spine and it crumpled, fell magic dispersing in a shuddering rush up her arms.

She heard another cry, another shriek, and the creak of his bow, but she was too busy pushing through the trees. The spell had left her from her side, and she followed where it led, panting for breath and grinning from the glory of battle. It had been too long since she had held a blade, too long since she had hunted as she was _meant_  to hunt.

There were voices in the distance, Herleva’s and Odalric’s and the others’, more spread out than before but just as loud. The woods echoed with the howling of the stalking corpses, and she met two more in a break in the trees. Her blade cleaved the head from one, but the other got behind her, its rusted blade scraping raw over her shoulder. It didn’t cut deep where it found a break in her armor, but it was enough to draw a roar from her as her pommel struck its skull, the bone buckling beneath.

Somewhere behind her, Nathaniel followed, but the chill was strong and she shot for it, feet pounding across the ground. The trees thinned, and thinned, until finally she stumbled into the clearing she had found so many months ago.

This was it. This was the place. And the demon…

She saw no sign of it, and she turned, blade outstretched and eyes wild. It was like she was a beast already, and she listened for any tinkling of bells and chains, lifted her nose to the air to search it for the scent of something beyond the real. Every sense was alight. And if her grin had turned wolfish-

“ _Cauthrien!_ ”

She could feel it, roaring in her veins and making her mouth water. Her teeth began to sharpen, her jaw growing hot and aching as it began to stretch. The pain made her panic, made her cry out and jerk against the empty air. She fought it. She fought the way her hands twitched, the way her knees began to buckle.

And for a few moments, she thought she could win. She was strong, stronger than she had been since it all began, and she  _would not_  bow. But then she bent double with the ripping pain of her spine shifting, and she heard a low chuckle on the wind that was not Nathaniel’s.

“Looking for something, little knight?”


	9. Chapter 9

"Maker's breath-" Nathaniel hissed. Cauthrien barely heard him over the pounding in her head, the echoing of the laugh. It was different from the first time. Where once the demon had been just a creature standing before her, almost a woman but not quite, now- now she was everywhere. She was in everything. She filled Cauthrien's nostrils and shivered through Cauthrien's fingers, and Cauthrien could only grit her teeth as she gasped for breath, hand planted firm on the ground.

 _Kill her_ , she thought, desperately.  _Kill the demon_. But the words wouldn't rise to her lips. Her throat burned and clenched, and she wasn't sure that her tongue could form speech any longer. She whined, an injured beast, and rocked forward.

The demon laughed again. Where was the creak of a bow? The whistling song of an arrow? She struggled to lift her head and blink through clouded eyes. The demon- the demon was in a body, just before her. And Nathaniel-

Nathaniel stood transfixed.

"Stay there, little knight. I have some things to say to your loyal hunter in kaddis," the demon purred, and advanced with swaying step towards Nathaniel.

 _No_ -

In the distance, far off, she could hear the fighting still. But it was slowing and dying, the same way Nathaniel's resolve weakened with every step of the demon. She could picture it all too clearly - Odalric's head, rolling torn from his neck. Herleva's ribs crushed by emaciated, cold-weathered arms. Or maybe they ran; maybe they retreated, and soon the dead would come to them instead.

But Nathaniel-

The demon reached him and stretched out a hand, settling it on his jaw. "Little lost boy," she crooned. "Always being misled by stories. First you thought your father a good man, and then you thought your commander a murderer. And now stories bring you all the way here. When you will you tire of listening? When will you realize that not everything is held in a story?"

"Let go of me-" Nathaniel whispered, and Cauthrien growled assent. It was all that she could do. She could feel fur erupting through her skin beneath her armor, her muscles and bones growing to stretch it tight. Laces cut deep into her. She scrabbled at them blind. They popped and the leather began to fall away, but not fast enough.

And the demon never stopped.

"You always wanted to be knight," she breathed, lips close to his, "but your father wouldn't let you. You wanted to kill the Warden, but you weren't able to. And now you want to save a rabid dog... and you can't."

" _Stop_ -" Nathaniel hissed, and the demon only laughed.

Cauthrien fought to gain her feet, but the pain forced her down once more, a new surge that made her groan and whimper. Her vision shifted and warped, and she felt her ears contort, her feet elongate.

"Sent away on a fool's errand, even... you've always wanted to be the center, the point of impact, the one everybody looks to." The demon nuzzled against his cheek. "... And I can give that to you. Nobody else can, but I know just how to do it. I know what you want,  _Ser Nathaniel_."

Nathaniel's exhale was sharp and edged on a sob.

"Knight of the realm, Hero of Ferelden... with a keep all your own, your sister near at hand. And a wife whose respect you have earned, who trusts you with every inch of her being. Would you have wanted Ser Cauthrien? Would you have wanted to be her redemption and salvation? Her new rock, around which she could orbit? I can give you all of that. I can change it all."

 _No_ -

"I-"

Cauthrien surged forward, uncaring of the pain. Her fist struck the demon's side and the demon screeched, pushing Nathaniel away and rounding on her. Cauthrien stumbled to one side and barely caught herself, unbalanced in a body that didn't belong to her.

She snapped and growled and stared up at the demon-

And then she saw herself, half-beast, frothing at the mouth and snarling. She saw the grotesque twisting of her spine, the way her eyes were wide and bulging. Panicked, she shook her head, trying desperately to banish the image. It fell away but in its wake she found cold winding down her arms and into her claws. She jerked upright as if on puppet strings, and rounded on Nathaniel.

He stared, helpless. She could smell his fear. She could smell  _him_ , in every particular, and could taste his blood in her mouth already. She took a step forward. And then she froze, shaking her head once more. She looked at him, with his war paint streaked across his nose, and tried to focus on the scent of it.

She crouched low without wanting to, and she forced her head back and howled.

"Shh," the demon crooned. Cauthrien had nearly forgotten her. The voice whispered not from the air without but from inside of her, and she twitched, as if to buck off some attacker. It did nothing, and Cauthrien shut her eyes. "Shh," breathed the demon, and Cauthrien shuddered. "Let me. Let me, darling- let me have your eyes... and your ears... your tongue and your hands. I've already seen him, loyal at leading. Let me know what he tastes like, lost little knight, just like all the others your teeth have found for me."

She let out another howl of protest, rocking forward and clenching her claws to fists. She fought against the chill in her veins, but it only seemed to strengthen the more she pushed against the change. She could barely smell Nathaniel's kaddis, or the kaddis on her. She pushed-

And then she gave in, sinking forward and letting the beast take her.

The beast had no master, and she had to hope it would not let a demon ride in its skin.

 _The smell of_ **_home_ ** _hit her like a charging buck, and she rose up with a snarl. The scent was just before her, but behind- behind was something different and foreign, something wrong. It came too close, and she spun._

 _Human, but not. It was not prey, but the urge to hunt grew large, the urge to protect even greater. When the thing raised its arm, it was answered by a surge forward, snapping teeth and coiled muscle._

 _No blood filled her mouth but the flesh tore all the same. Chains caught in her teeth and she snarled, ripping her head back and striking hard against the demon's stomach. The skin gave, and only cold spilled from it. The demon crumpled, and Cauthrien threw back her head in a long, triumphant song._

 _And then the arrow struck her, just below her ribs, piecing her back and making her stagger forward._

 _Another pinpoint burst of agony. She twisted, growling and snapping and looking for- him. For Nathaniel._

 _Nathaniel-_

She didn't see the final arrow, only felt it as it struck her chest and knocked her back. The last thing she saw was bare tree tops, and no cry left her lips. And then there was stillness, and the hunt was through.

* * *

She woke up on her side, clothed and warm with the glow of a low fire through the lattice wall. There was soft conversation somewhere on the other side of the longhouse, and for a moment she frowned, confused. It had to be near dawn. At dawn, they would leave, and track down the demon. At dawn-

 _At dawn they had left_. She sat upright, then hissed as every muscle in her body screamed out in protest.  _Bones shifting, skin stretching_ -

But there were no arrows piercing her skin. She had no bandages binding her skin, and only bruises and scratches on her arms and cheeks. With a shuddering inhale, she looked around.

Nathaniel sat nearby, dozing in a chair.

Gingerly, she slipped from the sleeping platform. Her touch was light as she settled her hand against his shoulder, and he woke up without a start, shifting in his seat and smiling faintly.

"It's good to see you awake," he murmured.

"How long have I...?"

"Under a day." He leaned forward and she let go of him, stepping back so that he could stand and stretch. The war paint had been washed from his face, and he had found a razor. "... Are you feeling well?" he asked, all concern.

She sank back on to the edge of the platform, running her hand over the furs that covered it "Sore. Nothing worse than that."

"Good. I'm glad." He rubbed at his shoulder a moment, and she mimicked him, though her hand prodded where his kneaded.

"... I wasn't shot?" she asked at last, when she was certain there were no bandages lurking beneath her clothing.

He frowned. "Shot? No."

She exhaled shakily, trying to sort out the last few memories she had. Howling- "And Herleva? Odalric?" Had they shot at her at all? Her throat tightened. Had she killed them?

"Saw nothing," he said, and her breath shuddered back into her. "They heard your howling, but believed me when I said the beast was dead." He smiled, and came to crouch before her, hands on his knees a moment before he reach out to touch her forearm and rub comforting circles against it.

"Good." She took a deep breath, and rubbed with her other hand at where she could have sworn the arrow had driven through her chest. "I felt- in those last moments, I felt-"

"Demons can make you feel a lot of things," he said with a snort, and she canted her head, considering him. He didn't meet her gaze, fiddling with the cuff of his sleeve.

"Yes," she said, slowly. "They can. What she told you..."

He cleared his throat. "Was... accurate, yes. In its way."

"My redemption and my salvation?" she asked, and she had the strength to lift a brow, to lean in with a testing smile. There was no longer the weight of a beast under her skin, bone upon bone to bring her down. He had been right. They had beaten it. In a day, it had been done.

He flushed, and she found herself smiling in truth, reaching out to cup his jaw. The contact came more easily than it had in town, and where it once had made her want to sob with relief, now it made her only long for more.

"Well?" she asked.

"Am I?"

She considered, then leaned forward further to kiss his brow. "Something like that, I think," she said, and closed her eyes, feeling his hands slide to her hips. "Without you..."

There was a rattling of the lattice and Cauthrien opened her eyes again reluctantly. Odalric stood there, studiously looking aside. When he didn't turn, she sighed and said, "Yes?"

"Lothar wants to speak with you."

Nathaniel pulled away from her, frowning. "Now? It can't even be dawn yet."

Odalric shrugged. "Trust me, I know. But the Thane doesn't sleep often, and now that she," he nodded towards Cauthrien, "is awake, he wants to have the arrangements made. He has already had to wait long enough."

With a grim smile, Cauthrien pushed herself up, then held out a hand for Nathaniel. He waved it away and took her spot.

"This is something for you to do," he said. "I'll wait here. And possibly getting some proper sleep." The smirk he offered was something relaxed and intimate, and she felt her cheeks heat from it. If Odalric hadn't looked on, she would have fallen back into bed with him.

As it was, she only nodded and then followed Odalric out of their set-off room and to the central fire.

Lothar sat cross-legged next to the older woman Cauthrien had glimpsed the day before. It was the woman who watched her approach, and who held a length of thick cord in her wizened hands. Cauthrien inclined her head to both, then took a seat across from them.

"I am glad to see you've recovered," Lothar said, and his words drew Cauthrien's gaze back. "The demon is dead and the werewolf is slain. You've done us a service. And none of my people have sustained any serious injury."

"I thank you again, for lending your aid. I couldn't have accomplished it otherwise."

The woman snorted. "No. You couldn't have."

Lothar ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head. "So now," he said, "to determining the length of your service." Cauthrien nodded, and he continued. "We will be moving within the next two years, depending on how the spring yield goes and how the winter ends. Because you cost our warriors only a day and brought safety and glory with the deed, that will be the maximum length of your service."

Two years didn't sound so bad, not at all, and Cauthrien inclined her head. "I accept that. It is a small service to pay in kind."

"Perhaps," the woman said, "we shouldn't give her the rope at all, Lothar. If she's content to stay..."

Lothar chuckled, but shook his head once more.

"The rope?"

"A tradition," Lothar said, and the woman held it out to her. Lothar pulled the blade from his hip and offered the hilt as well. Cauthrien took both. "Ingvert will recite a prayer, and you will cut this rope into as many pieces as you choose and can manage before she is done. Each piece represents a month. And when it is through, that will be the number of months less two years that you will stay with us."

She looked down at the rope and shifted the grip of the knife in her hand. Two years was not so bad. Was a year better, or worse?

She wasn't sure, but she nodded and said, "I'm ready."

* * *

"Six months isn't so bad," Nathaniel said, yawning as she stripped the borrowed clothing from her aching limbs, until she was in only her smalls.

"Not at all." Her smile was thin, though, as she settled onto the bedding beside him. The knife had been sharper than expected, and she wondered if it was a boon granted to her, or a way to make her leave more quickly. Still, the rope had been cut, and the prayer had gone on longer than she expected.

Six months of service.

Nathaniel touched her elbow, then her hip, and when she didn't move away, he pulled her closer. "Is six months so bad?" he asked as he draped an arm over her waist. The rest of the longhouse was stirring, and she wasn't particularly tired, but the touch soothed her in a way she couldn't quite find the words for.

"I just don't know what comes after," she said. "When I come back to Ferelden proper. Do I go back to that town?"

"What do you want to do?" He drew the fur up over her.

"There's not much I can do." She sighed, hand coming to rest on his hip. He was warm and less dressed than he had been when she left, and the slide of skin on skin was familiar and soothing. His toes brushed hers before he tangled their legs together, and she nestled back against him.

"There's always," he said, slowly, "the Grey Wardens. It would likely mean leaving Ferelden, but it is a purpose. And..."

"And you're there."

"I am." His smile was lopsided. "But I think you would make a wonderful Warden, for what it's worth. And you would be able to protect others and wear armor and ride off to battle."

Cauthrien turned it over a moment, then lifted her chin and ghosted a kiss across his lips.

"I'll think about it."


	10. Epilogue

Six months was not so long at all, but it was long enough that the ride across Ferelden to the keep at Amaranthine without a sword at her side felt unbearably strange. Her skin was chapped from the harsh winds of the mountains, her hair longer and threaded with braids that she didn't care to take out just yet, her skin traced with scars from hard labor. But her back was straight and her mind was clear.

The beast was gone from her; long days and nights of work, food shortages- none of it had drawn fur and claw from her again. She was herself. And in six months, she had made her decision.

To the Grey Wardens she rode, proud and determined, and thinking only sometimes of the man that waited for her there.

* * *

He didn't meet her at the gate, but he was there when she put her request before the current Warden-Commander, a woman she didn't know who had replaced the Hero. He was there, too, those hours later when they brought the chalice filled with blood. He stepped close enough while they prepared to lay a hand on her shoulder and to murmur in her ear,

"You've taken a beast into your blood before, and defeated it. You can do the same now."

His voice had echoed in her ears as they recited the oath of her new calling, and as she lifted the chalice to her lips and drank deep, the blood not just thick and coppery but rank and foul, she remembered too his words,

 _And now you are fed, and it is finished_.

Her eyes rolled back and she gave herself over to the flood of wrongness that took her, trusting that they would catch her when she fell and she would rise, a bargain made that she would stand by for however long it lasted.

* * *

She woke up on her side, with Nathaniel flush against her back and breathing slowly. She was shivering, though the bed was piled with more furs than was necessary for that time of year in that part of the country. Her head pounded. Bits of dream came back to her, screeching nightmares and the memory of running through the dark, searching for the dead.

Groaning, she rolled away from the solid warmth of him and stumbled out of the bed, pressing at her eyes and cheeks. They were all as they should be.

The bed creaked. Nathaniel's breath shuddered, and his voice was rough and quiet when he asked, "How do you feel?"

"Exhausted," she mumbled, taking a few awkward steps and then turning to face him. "Horrific headache, unpleasant dreams..."

But her mouth, at least, was not coated in blood. There was no copper tang. She wondered if they had given her water while she slept; she could taste no trace of the Joining.

"You took it better than most," Nathaniel said, sitting up and running a hand through his hair. "Most have screaming nightmares. You just shook a little and muttered curses." He chuckled quietly, his smile soft. "... I would have weathered any of it, though, to know that you're alive."

Cauthrien frowned. " _To know that I'm alive_ ," she repeated. "... Nathaniel?"

He cleared his throat but didn't answer.

Her frown deepened, and she ducked her head to try to catch his suddenly elusive gaze. Sore limbs and an aching skull were easy to ignore in the face of an unexpected brush with mortality. "You didn't tell me I could have died," she said.

He thumbed at his mouth, then shrugged, hands out as his sides. " _And should you perish_ ," Nathaniel said, then rubbed at the back of his neck. "It's something we don't... tell recruits. But it's always a possibility. That much darkspawn blood..."

"And you encouraged me to drink it?" she asked, coming to sit lightly on the edge of the bed. The furrow in her brow eased with each passing moment, each heartbeat that reminded her that even if she could have died, she hadn't.

A part of her had known, anyway. His words had been hint enough, and she had lived through a Blight. It wasn't as much a surprise as it could have been. Her pulse only quickened at the thought that he had invited her to it.

He still didn't meet her gaze, and his voice was quieter still. "I was fairly certain you would live."

"And if I hadn't?"

"Then I would have led your funeral." He took a deep breath, then lifted his head and reached out to touch her shoulder. "I offered you a purpose, and you came. I knew that if you came, it wouldn't be for me - it would be to join the Wardens. I've only ever been a treat on top of it all. I knew you weren't risking death on my behalf."

Cauthrien said nothing. He was right, in his way. The specter of death didn't seem so terrifying as it should have.

"... Forgive me, Cauthrien?"

She lifted her head with a small smile. "I never faulted you for it."

"I would have hated myself if you had died," he said, voice dropping as with a touch he led her back onto the bed in full. "I would have mourned you. I-"

Cauthrien quieted him with a kiss, and a raw laugh started from his throat as his hands settled tentatively on her hips. She moved close enough to wrap her arms around his shoulders, to relearn how he felt against her. It was a far cry from her run down home in a backwater town, desperate in front of the fire for any measure of connection with another person, any moment of peace granted in another's arms, and she found herself smiling against his lips.

There was no demon in her veins to spur her on or to tempt him with visions of what could have been; they tangled instead with nothing between them but air and clothing. He was warm as he pulled her down to the furs and kissed a path along her jaw. "But you're here," he murmured, sound against skin. "You're alive." His kisses moved lower and he loosened the laces at her throat. "And there's always a home for you here, if you want it," he breathed, lifting his chin to gaze at her.

She thought of smearing kaddis down his nose with shaking fingers, or of streaking his skin with scented war paint. The lines had guided her through the woods and out of the darkness, and reaching out, she traced where they had been. He caught her hand in his and pressed kisses to her palm and fingers, no claws to stop him and no fur to deaden the feeling.

"I've missed you," he said. "Stories aren't nearly enough, you know." He dotted each fingertip with a brush of his lips between words. "Not even the stories of us together that I tell myself. Of the time I met the great Ser Cauthrien and she helped me defeat a great evil while I helped her destroy the darkness threatening to consume her."

Cauthrien couldn't stop her laugh, her shake of her head. "You make it sound so romantic."

"Stories aren't always true," he reminded with a kiss at her throat. "You are no dragon. You are no demon. And," he murmured, settling beside her and kissing her lips, "you are no beast."

"Am I not?" she asked, and she had enough distance to growl low in her throat, to pull her hand down his side, blunt nails scraping. It drew an answering laugh from him, and he pulled back enough to look at her, thumb stroking over her cheek.

"Were your eyes always golden?" he murmured, and she blinked.

"No. I- always thought they were grey."

"Then maybe there is a little beast left in you," he chuckled, then brushed his lips against her brow. "But they're beautiful."

"Flatterer," she said, but she couldn't help her laugh. She canted her head and leaned into him, a smile on her lips and her headache and nightmares forgotten.

 

 

 

_  
**The End**   
_


End file.
